


You Did Well, Overlord

by technoxenoholic



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Everything is Mostly Glossed Over, Gen, It's Only Mildly Divergent Though, It's Overlord Though So You've Been Warned, Mind Rape, Other, POV Second Person, Suicidal Thoughts, There's Violence but it's not graphic, Torture, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 00:08:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15424671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/technoxenoholic/pseuds/technoxenoholic
Summary: He must never know how it hurts you to lose—how desperately, howbrutallyyou’ve learned to fight so that youneverlose, and how it is to be brought crashing down, again and again. And again, you fall by his hand.A sort of word-vomit/character study on Overlord, with some minor tweaks to the canon according to personal taste.





	You Did Well, Overlord

# Beginning

There's this vague sense, early on, of a sickly sweet and hunting thing. It bursts from you, and you're alone, and then you're cradled and praised, the way you will not be again for a very, very long time. You will never remember it, but it's seared into your spark—alongside the earliest possible taste of death.

The first thing you _do_ remember is... pain. It's an ache in too-powerful systems, underfueled; it's a sting in your joints, full of grit and twisted out of place in the attempt to get it out; it's a throbbing in your t-cog, one you can't relieve for fear that your mind will be split asunder and you will never be the same again. And it’s a _hunger;_ you know not for what.

The pain eases for the first time the first day you see _him_ in the ring. You never think of what the hollowness in your chest or the dizziness behind your optics might mean, but when he grins up into the crowd after his kill (for show, for show, you hear the whispers saying that he _hates_ this—but he _mustn't)_ all you feel is _adrenaline._ You never hear the warning in your spark, that this is a dangerous mech. You aren’t listening. You don’t care. You want to do what _he_ does.

* * *

It comes and goes, but in the ring, all you can feel is _power._ These other mechs are nothing, and you are _unstoppable._ Your first death match, you stall at the end—adrenaline is pushing you harder, harder, and under the thrill there’s a _fear_ but you feel no pain. You tell the audience that you want to savor your first kill. It isn’t your first, not really, but you _do_ savor it.

And then one day you’re allowed to fight him. It’s not a death match. Maybe that’s for the best.

You hold your own, at first. But then he grins, and something in him unlocks, and he beats you into the dirt. _You did_ well, _Overlord,_ he purrs, but the praise is mocking and ugly. And every time he beats you—and every time, he _does_ beat you—he makes damn well sure you know how much better than you he is.

The looks. The smirks. The cheering crowds, celebrating while you lie in the dirt and bleed. You hardly feel it anymore, but the pain comes back again in those moments.

* * *

You’re obsessed with him now. You know it, but the words can never leave your lips. He must never know how it hurts you to lose—how desperately, how _brutally_ you’ve learned to fight so that you _never_ lose, and how it is to be brought crashing down, again and again. And again, you fall by his hand.

He starts a rebellion. You follow. The gladiators won’t fight you anymore—only him. You need more targets, better targets, tougher targets. You need to be good enough to beat him. There is no more challenge except in the times he deigns to spar with you again. Once, you come close—so close you could _taste_ it—and he sends you away.

You kill, and you kill, and you curse his name, and you _kill._ Until there’s nothing left.

* * *

Back again. You’re quivering with the thought. He’s so close, you could almost touch him.

He wants to give you an upgrade. He wants to make you _invincible,_ one of his warriors elite, and your spark burns at the thought. Finally, _finally,_ you will be strong enough to beat him, and the tools in your hands will be the tools he places there himself, and the irony is so, _so_ beautiful.

You, of course, agree to undergo the procedure.

You can kill the surgeon. That fragile little head crushes so easily in your hand. You don’t care about Shockwave. But you can’t kill _him._ A scream lodges itself in your throat, in your mind, and the harder you try to destroy him, even _hurt_ him just the tiniest bit, the more your mind slips away from you until you’re hunched, shaking, on the floor, and fear and adrenaline are so awful now. So, _so_ awful.

He laughs at you, and you can’t even think to throttle him for it.

After you’ve been through the most hellish training cycle you can imagine, beaten and hunted and _encouraged_ to forego any attachments to keep you strong and invulnerable… he sends you away again. You don’t know what to do with yourself besides fight and kill. It’s all you know. It’s all you have. Your dreams of beating him twist into awful nightmares, now, and there’s a throbbing in your mind that whispers of your doom.

* * *

You want to go back. You crave it. You don’t know what to do with yourself and when the opportunity to get into his favor and get close to him presents itself you leap on it without a moment’s hesitation. Soundwave is easily rescued. You can feel how he pities you just as strongly as he is disgusted by you—you try to avoid looking at him.

Trepan is… an _opportunity._ You want to fix what’s wrong with you, and he knows how. So you take him away with you. He is afraid of you, as he should be, but his optics stay watchful, searching. Something in his gaze goes through you, sends a shudder down your back strut, but draws you in.

He’s an opportunist himself. You threaten to kill him. He calls your bluff. And suddenly, horrifyingly, you have no power over him anymore.

Having Trepan inside your head is like a clawing blackness, swallowing up everything that’s left of you. He pries you open and leaves his footprints in your mind, burns himself into your psyche. The first thing he teaches you is how to resist a mnemosurgical assault—and to do that, he assaults you again, and again, and again. It’s only the first of his torturous teachings.

It’s almost a blessing when the DJD come to kill him. But by then you’re addicted, and the withdrawal between your sessions (after your _final_ session) is a burning, crawling ache in the back of your processor, down your spine. You see it over and over again, your chance at ever _dreaming_ of killing _him_ torn away from you as you watch, stunned, helpless, as Trepan’s head is torn from his body.

Again, and again, and again.

# Middle

The last time _he_ ever comms you is to tell you that you’re to leave what little purpose you’ve dug out of this world for yourself and become… a phase sixer. Nothing but a cyberhound on a chain, a tool for his ends. You deny him.

You leave one of them alive to bring the message back. You will not be tossed aside like a toy and ordered around like a slave. You challenge Megatron to beat you one last time. Either you will beat him (no, no, the hole in your mind hisses, you may never touch him, never hurt him) or he will kill you.

Either way, you will be free of this.

* * *

There’s a certain euphoria once you’ve managed to break away. But it fades, quickly, into anxiety. He hasn’t come. He never comes. He never answers your challenge, never even sends you a scolding response. You hear _rumor_ that you’ve been added to the List, and it sends you into hysterical laughter.

You’ve forgotten what crying is like, since… since Trepan. Or maybe you never knew.

The only thing you can think to do is to prove yourself a worthy opponent. So you open up _hell itself,_ you take every advantage you can and you destroy everything that crosses your path. And in the one occasion you don’t have the firepower on your own, you manipulate a commander (beneath you, but useful) of your old faction into bringing their might to bear for you.

It doesn’t work. You leave them, and Megatron doesn’t do a damn thing about it.

* * *

Eventually you realize that he’s not paying any attention to you. It burns, to be ignored, and you lash out. Another primitive world falls, but it’s no longer satisfying to you. You need…

You don’t know what you need anymore.

But somehow, you catch the rumor of some artifact that, supposedly, would grant you the knowledge to repair your mind and destroy him. Conveniently, it’s being held in the same prison that your old faction is sieging. You dispose the commander, you take the prison, you free many of the prisoners as a gesture of _goodwill_ (Shockwave attempts to fix the hole in your mind first. It doesn’t work—you go back to plan A), and you set about interrogating the warden for whatever he knows.

It would be easier, you think, if Trepan had taught you more. If you could simply pluck the knowledge from Fortress Maximus’ mind… For a moment, you long for Trepan, but the sharp burn in your mind chases you off the idea quickly. So you go at it a different way: torture. It’s perhaps the first time you’ve done it (does it _count_ as torture when you make a bot die slowly for your own pleasure, and for no other gain?), but you take to it easily.

Unfortunately, Fortress Maximus is a tough code to crack. Frustration leads you to be harsher, on him and on the prisoners you hold. On some level, you hope it brings Megatron to you. But then again, you’re not ready. You still can’t even fantasize about killing him. You might just be projecting onto the fights your little playthings have for you.

But it’s not Megatron that comes after you. It’s the Wreckers. (You should have expected as much, when your prisoners are Autobots. _Were_ Autobots, anyway.) They die, but they don’t all die as easily as you expected. They’ve even brought a _human_ with them. And she… she destroys you.

_Megatron is dead!_

You’re already burning and hurting and now you’re empty, lost—what do you do now? You’ve never known any meaning but him.

* * *

Autobots are sentimental and generous. They’re fools. But you can’t muster the will to even mock them. They’ve repaired you, brought you back to full power (such fools), but you’re dead in all ways but physically. You can’t speak except to ask them to kill you. You ask them again and again. It’s the only way out you have left. But they don’t listen. Sentimental, generous fools, they lock you up and leave you alone and directionless.

You hate him for doing this to you.

 _Kill me,_ you urge the universe. _Kill me._ You beg of anyone at all who might hear you. _Kill me._

* * *

By now you recognize the feeling of having someone in your head. This one isn’t like Trepan—softer. More hesitant. He doesn’t want to be in your mind any more than you do. He shifts something in your memory, but you can’t bring yourself to care. _Kill me, kill me, kill me,_ you continue to plead, and it makes him uncomfortable—you can _feel_ it in the thoughts that bleed from him to you. He has none of the control that Trepan had.

And so eventually, one day, you find out that Megatron is _still alive._

You flip it on him. Laughing, resurrected by the revelation, you raid Chromedome’s mind. Images burst across your vision: he’s afraid for his fragile, tiny little conjunx, Rewind. The code for the cell you’ve been kept in is in his recent memory, and you rip it from him violently—Trepan never did teach you subtlety.

And then you’re free again. You, at full power, are far too much for these pathetic Autobots to handle. But then the truth of Chromedome’s meddling in your mind comes to light: Rodimus speaks _those words_ and your spark seizes in panic—he can’t have defeated you, _only Megatron has ever defeated you—_

By the time you fully realize what’s happened, Fortress Maximus is shoving you back into your cell. And a dimly familiar little mech sneaks in with you to dislodge the sword blocking the door.

You make extra sure to destroy Rewind slowly and painfully and as horrifically as possible, as revenge for the damage his conjunx did to you.

And then you get blown up.

* * *

Some worlds have creatures that are lauded as truly unkillable. Nebulos has therls, for instance. Earth has cockroaches.

Cybertron has you.

The Galactic Council finds you, floating in space, slowly overheating. They take you in and repair you, because they want you to destroy Megatron for them.

You can’t. But they don’t know that. And you’re still planning to fix that little problem.

You wander for a while, before you find him battling Tarn on some planet. You can’t harm Megatron, but you _can_ harm Tarn—keep him from stealing _your_ kill. Megatron escapes what should be his death, and the realization burns, but what are you supposed to do about it?

Surprisingly, Tarn wants to ally with you, rather than kill you. (You’re not sure you would _object_ if he did, though, at this point.)

Chromedome socking you in the jaw and actually doing you damage winds you something fierce. Whatever cheat the Autobots are using doesn’t last long, but you’re still shaken. But then the revelation that Megatron has gone _soft_ hits you like a train. You are… disgusted. Killing him now would do you no good; even if you could hurt him, you’ve lost your chance for it to be worth anything.

So, you go.

# End

You wander. You feel empty, lost. You stop keeping up with your self-maintenance, and the old aches and pains from the beginning come out again. You have no reason to live anymore, and no one out there is powerful enough to kill you.

You can’t do it yourself. You try, multiple times. You have a gun: one powerful enough that you could blast your own head or sparks into atoms with. You can’t pull the trigger. You try to transform and stay separated long enough that your spark fades, but anxiety and panic pulls you back together into your whole.

You don’t _want_ to die. But there’s nothing else you _can_ do.

Until you pick up a signal.

There is a mech named Tarantulas, currently on the planet Earth, who tells you he has an _offer_ for you. He won’t tell you the details until you meet him in person. You, with nothing else to do but die, accept.

* * *

Tarantulas is eager to let you _settle in_ before revealing his offer to you. He fascinates you. He’s ugly, bizarre, _alien._ He looks more at home on this awful organic world than you think he ever would on Cybertron. He won’t tell you what caused him to be this way, so bestial that even Cybertronians with beast-form altmodes can’t hold a candle to how foreign he is.

He has a habit of laughing. There’s a chuckle he does, one that you suppose he thinks is intimidating, that infuriates you. You wonder how easy it would be to snap his exoskeleton under your heel.

But there are glimpses of something more genuine to him. Something tells you he’s hurting.

* * *

As it turns out, his _offer_ is to turn you into one of the native lifeforms of this awful planet through the same process he used to mutate himself into the creature he is now. He has a plan for it, a reason, but you don’t listen to him—you’re too appalled by the thought of letting another person into your head, letting another person experiment on your frame and cripple you as much as they empower you.

You tell him you’ve been through enough of that slag in your life. You threaten to kill him if he tries. You pray he can’t see the fear in your optics.

Either way, he doesn’t push the matter.

But Tarantulas doesn’t give up on his weird experiments. He finds someone else to be his test subject, but it fails—the process tears the mech apart. He gives up, for the time being, and focuses on what he calls the “time maze”. And that takes a long, long time.

You have nowhere else to go. So, you stay. With him.

You stay with him for a long, long time.

* * *

Tarantulas doesn’t seem so ugly anymore when he’s curled up on your chestplate, purring quietly. You card your fingers through his strangely soft fur, and he nuzzles closer and purrs louder.

You’re not used to gentleness, but it soothes away the anxious itch to kill and gives you just enough distraction to ignore the dull ache in your processor. Tarantulas doesn’t have the mnemosurgical capability to fix you, but that doesn’t matter anymore. You’ve gotten used to being broken. He’s just as broken as you are, anyway—so as far as you’re concerned, you deserve each other.

He murmurs something fond into your chest. You smile, and you tell him _It’s mutual, darling._


End file.
